This season, the Shoe Leather podcast is going to 1970 Greenwich Village. A townhouse suddenly explodes and authorities find out that it’s ground zero for the operations of the Weather Underground: a radical group of young revolutionaries who use violence to “bring the war home.” Three members are killed in the explosion, two others escape. Police would later describe the townhouse as a “bomb factory.” What pushes a protest movement toward violence? What makes a group of mostly middle-class, college-educated young men and women decide to build a bomb?
The six episodes explore how a group of college activists evolved from protest to militancy, embracing political violence as a means of opposing the Vietnam War and advancing civil rights.
The series also poses new questions about who and how many people were in the townhouse when it exploded. In the final episode, reporters speak to the only one left alive to tell the story — Cathy Wilkerson, now 81, still wrestling with what she did, what she believes, and what, if anything, she truly regrets.
Shoe Leather is a production of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. Professor Joanne Faryon leads the class. Adjunct professors Peter Leonard and Rachel Quester are her co professors. For the third year in a row, the podcast has been featured on the Spotify main page.
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Shoe Leather is a Columbia Libraries Podcast. Learn more about the program here.